American Heritage History of Mexico by Parkes, Henry Bamford

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS
American Heritage History of Mexico by Henry Bamford Parkes

Peaceful places have no history, and Mexico has more than its share.
I loved this well-edited overview that covered the five hundred plus years from the first Spanish Conquest to the election of Cardenas that followed the first peaceful revolution in Mexican history.

Excerpts from American Heritage History of Mexico:

Bitter racial warfare still raged in Yucatan, reducing by half the population of the peninsula. And meanwhile, politicians and journalists in the United States, intoxicated by Manifest Destiny, were asking more and more vehemently why their country did not do its duty by carrying the benefits of Anglo-Saxon civilization as far as the borders of Guatemala.
There was only one Mexican who had the energy and the prestige necessary in a dictator; Santa Anna, who acquired the nimbus of a national hero whenever he disappeared across the Caribbean, was still the indispensable chieftain of any political combination. In spite of Santa Anna’s thirty-year career of trickery and corruption.
He was willing, however, to again sacrifice himself for the good of his country. On April 1, he landed at Vera Cruz, where he was welcomed by the familiar mob of generals, office-hunters, and agiotistas; and after attending banquets and bullfights and listening to his own praises from innumerable orators, he proceeded slowly to the capital, where he was formally proclaimed president on April 20. By no efforts of his own, he had been granted powers such as no Mexican had ever enjoyed before.

While there was some increase in fruits, vegetables, and commercial crops, there was actually a decline in corn and other basic foodstuffs. Under Cardenas and Avila Camacho, as under Di­az, despite the employment of two-thirds of the population in agriculture, Mexico continued to import food.